“Acute Low Back Pain is the Enormous
Fatigue”
Shoji
Kobayashi
There are many patients who come to the
clinic due to acute low back pain. For example, a woman who came to the clinic
recently, visited her daughter in San Francisco. On the day of her arrival in
SF, as soon as she bent her body downward to take the luggage, the acute pain
ran through her left low back and she could not move. She had to rest for a
while, then, came back to Japan.
In the view of Western medicine, 70% of
acute low back pain’s causes are unknown. It is rare that you can find the
disorder of the bone of low back by X-ray. Acute low back pain is also called
as “intervertebral sprain”. When bending
the body, the tendons that stabilize the vertebrae are lengthened, and the pain
occurs. So, usually speaking, it is very rare to have the disorder of bones.
It is very interesting that the most
patients complaining the acute low back pain have no pressure pain objectively
(pressed by others) on the area where they feel the pain. Sometimes, there is a
muscle tension, but there is no anatomical problem there.
However, why do they feel such a pain due
to the slight movement? It is a mystery.
It is similar to the mechanism of chemical
sensitivity. For example, the sick house syndrome is the physical constitution
reacting sensitively to the volatile chemicals in the paint of the wall and the
glue of the wall paper of the new building.
In addition to the allergic body tendency,
easy to react to such chemicals, one has been absorbing the volatile chemicals
little by little for a long time. As a result, the new stimulation of the
volatile chemical to the maximum permissible amount, the symptom appears suddenly.
Imagine a glass filled with water as much as having surface tension. When
adding a drop of water to the glass, the water spills out. Chemical sensitive
is similar to this.
Let us apply this mechanism to the acute
low back pain. As one is very tired, the body condition is very unstable, easy
to lose the balance of muscle tissues of the low back with a little
stimulation. When trying to carry the luggage or sneezing, pressure is applied
to the low back, and the acute low back pain occurs.
Here, it is said that the most cases of
acute low back pain are healed after taking the good rest. It is true that when
one takes a rest, one can recover from the fatigue and pain disappears, but it
indicates that the fatigue is the main cause of the acute low back pain.
It can be said that the 70% of acute low
back pain which causes are unknown stem from the accumulated fatigue for a long
time, as well as the most diseases, that the tiredness of the body lie
underneath.
30 % of acute low back pain with obvious
causes is due to things, such as the bone disorder. However, for example, even
if the intervertebral disk hernia is found, when you think seriously, why one
has the disk hernia? The cause of it would be the true cause. So, the disk
hernia is just a trigger of the acute low back pain.
By the way, the woman mentioned above had
high fever, close to 38 ℃ (100.4 Fahrenheit) after the treatment. Then, the left low back
pain disappears, but the pain moved to the left back behind the heart, and next
week, her left knee started to be painful.
This indicates that after the treatment,
the tension all over the body started to be loosened. This lady understands the
treatment policy of acupuncture very well, so she understood that “the pain
moved” without panic.
However, in fact, this is not that the pain
moved, but the distinguishing pain was resolved and the next stage pain
appeared. The fatigue of the body was layered, and the body started to heal
from the surface layer. After the next treatment, all pain of the whole body
disappeared.
Here, how to prevent acute low back pain?
Answering this question simply, “not to accumulate fatigue”, that’s it.
The top cause of accumulated fatigue is
lack of sleep. Nothing can be substituted for sleep. In addition, when you are
extremely tired, refrain from taking a bath, because it would make your body
very cold and led to the fatigue.
Acute low back is troublesome because it can easily recur, so the prevention is extremely important.
*This is a translation of the article in the monthly magazine, "Will", February 2014.